Simulate This

A key tenet of postmodernism is that both internal and external reality are social constructions, reflecting (among other things) an individual’s cultural background, his language and his past and present experience. In the empirical setting, postmodernism has led to a resurgence of constructivist research and an emphasis on cultural relativism in any discourse.

Tenet. A key tenet. What is a tenet, anyway? Just kind of like an attitude? A hunch? A wild surmise? An ‘as if’? A sillybuggers idea that you know isn’t true but like to mess around with anyway? Something you like to say to make people roll their eyes and ask to see your travel papers? My Concise Oxford says it’s a principle, dogma, doctrine. Yeah, dogma – that fits. Because really – external reality is a social construction? Just like that? The objections to that are too obvious to be worth making – along the lines of ‘Okay, let’s see you jump off that building then.’ (Dawkins made the familiar observation about social constructionists at 30,000 feet.)

It may be that what the reviewer means, and what some postmodernists mean, is that our ideas or knowledge or beliefs about external reality are social constructions – but then they really need to say that, don’t they. And it may also be that the reviewer and some postmodernists mean that external reality itself is a social construction – in which case they’re barking mad and not worth reading. And a third possibility is that they mean the first but say the second in order to confound and mislead the general public, in which case they’re posing irresponsible frauds and still less worth reading.

In clinical setting, postmodernism has led to greater focus on narrative truth and skepticism regarding the relevance of objective research methods to all important psychological and psychopathological issues.

Oh, has it. Has it indeed. How very convenient. Skepticism regarding the relevance of ‘objective’ research methods – because subjective, i.e. evidence-free hunch-based inner-knowledge-driven ‘research methods’ are so much better. Because ‘narrative truth’ i.e. whatever story anyone feels like telling is so much better than plain old non-adjectival truth. Narrative truth, story truth, fun truth, what I like to say truth, ego-puffing truth, dramatic truth, exciting truth, colourful truth – all so much better than the plain unadorned kind. Hooray for postmodernism.

All of our values are simulated. What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of freedom.

Really!? Is it! Nothing to do with – oh, let’s see – the freedom to talk to other people, even strangers, even people of (breathe deeply now, stay calm) the opposite sex? The freedom to work? The freedom to walk about in the world? The freedom to go to school, even to university, even to graduate school or law school or medical school? The freedom to read? The freedom to write? The freedom to say ‘No’ to a marriage to someone one doesn’t want to be married to? The freedom to walk around in the world with one’s entire head even including the face and the whole of the neck naked and unclothed and bare? The freedom to write poetry? The freedom to have a book of poetry published? The freedom to write a book of poetry and have it published and succeed and win a prize? The freedom to write a book of poetry and have it published and succeed and win a prize and not be murdered for it? Is that a simulation? I don’t know – I have all those freedoms, myself, and I have to say I don’t regard them as simulations. I might, if I didn’t know there are other people in the world – women, actually – who don’t have all those freedoms – who don’t in fact have any of them, not one – and who end up as bleeding heaps of flesh as a result – but I do know that, so I don’t.

So I think Baudrillard is a damn fool for saying that. (It looks as if the interviewer thought so too. Good on her.)

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26 Responses to “Simulate This”

What I like about the pomos is they are so much fun. Other misguided people – those we have been discussing in other threads – make me angry (and I don’t like getting angry these days) or make me grind my teeth in annoyance (not good for my teeth).

“postmodernism has led to greater focus on narrative truth and skepticism regarding the relevance of objective research methods “. In other words, feel free to lie all you like, no one is going to check whether, as you claim, you were kidnapped aged 3 by your evil fairy godmother and spent your childhood in the same cage as Hansel & Gretel and escaped with the help of a passing dragon only to fall prey to alien abduction before being deposited by their flying butterdish at the local looneybin.

Hey, I’m not a philosopher, but is it not simply the case that someone like Baudrillard has mistaken epistemology for ontology? That if one inserts “perceptions of” into all their statements about reality, they start almost to make sense?

All this pomo nonsense does no favours to therapy. My girlfriend, a mental health social worker of some twenty years experience has worked in a secure unit with some of the most abused kids in the UK for five years as a qualified therapist and can’t stand these pomo fraudsters.

What bewilders me here is that Baudrillard is *obviously* rubbish. At least the review dressed its rubbish up in complex concepts (albeit wrong or badly understood). How did he get to be so famous? Why does anyone take him seriously?

“but is it not simply the case that someone like Baudrillard has mistaken epistemology for ontology? That if one inserts “perceptions of” into all their statements about reality, they start almost to make sense?”

Yes. That was my point in the Comment. “It may be that what the reviewer means, and what some postmodernists mean, is that our ideas or knowledge or beliefs about external reality are social constructions – but then they really need to say that, don’t they.”

Pomos do that a lot, and it can often be very hard to tell whether they’re doing it deliberately, to deceive the unwary, or are actually confused. But when it’s literary ‘Theory’ types doing it, confusion seems perfectly plausible – in fact likely.

1. Does anyone outside universities take the whole pomo/theory/deconstrucion bag seriously? Are their lay societies where they meet to talk like that? By now, there must be hundreds of thousands of university graduates who have learnt it and had to parrot its tenets to pass exams. Do they drop it all after graduation? I don;t even know of a non-academic literary critic who uses pomo dogma in reviewws.

2. By about now, we sholud be getting recantations from former adherents. A bit like the former communists who wrote books in the 80s. “For a while they fooled me” or “I only did it for the sex”

Ken “Does anyone outside universities take the whole pomo/theory/deconstrucion bag seriously”. Yes it would appear a good proportion of 80s Media Studies graduates now making a living as journalists on the broadsheets…

Yeah, what Nick said. And other wannabe trendies, too. But on the other hand, the amusing thing is that no one inside universities takes pomos seriously except inside their own tight little circle. But they think they make the world turn on its axis. Very odd, that. They’re all about skepticism, and yet they inflate their own significance out of all recognition. Very, very interesting – a lesson for us all. Or something.

I think I can fairly confidently confirm that while academic history got very worried about postmodernity 10 or 20 years ago, it is certainly not ‘penetrated’ by it today. There have been very valuable discussions on the nature of objectivity-versus-perspective; and there are other kinds of interests in, for example, Foucault’s less odd pronouncements, but the idea that the kind of Baudrillardian toss here has a foothold is thankfully inaccurate.

As to whether it’s funny or not, I think we have “bit of both” situation going on here. I trust everyone here is familiar with the Postmodernism Generator (at http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/). I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned on this site before. Much of the genuine article is no less funny than the crap churned out by that programme, but, on the other hand, none of it would really be funny if it weren’t for the fact that there are actual living human beings who take it seriously. Which is where it gets dangerous, with those who know it’s crap but pretend it isn’t using it as the underpinning for trying to show the world as they know damn well it isn’t and being taken seriously by way too many people, which can affect the lives of all of us. As I and others pointed out when Steve Fuller was on the agenda, all these nonsense threads have a tendency to converge, even when they don’t obviously share common roots.

Certainly people who have to study this silly stuff (and even more, those who “research” it) could do something far more useful with their time. But that applies to a lot of stuff taught and researched these days. Lucky Jim’s thesis would today, be one of real substance compared to many people get PhDs for.

And do you really feel confident that postmodernism plays no part at all in the pervasive reluctance to challenge evidence-free belief systems? Because I don’t – I think it does play a part. I think there’s a disseminated idea that it’s old hat and kind of clueless to think beliefs ought to be rationally defendable. It seems to me that belief can have some pretty dangerous outcomes.

Maybe “dangerous” and “significant harm” mean different things to different people, but for me to agree with what Ken said the way I understand those terms I’d also have to agree that no danger or harm could come out of anything that was culturally disseminated or politically promoted.

And I don’t.

Ideas influence actions and some of the ideas emanating from the rubbish we’re discussing allow people to develop beliefs that have no relationship with the real world and yet they are preached and action is undertaken that is based on them. It’s not as if the nonsense is somehow confined to academia in a quarantine-like situation. It can escape and have consequences for the real world (the one it likes to pretend is just a social construct).

“And do you really feel confident that postmodernism plays no part at all in the pervasive reluctance to challenge evidence-free belief systems?”

No. I’m not.

“Ideas influence actions and some of the ideas emanating from the rubbish we’re discussing allow people to develop beliefs that have no relationship with the real world and yet they are preached and action is undertaken that is based on them.”

Yes, indeed.

My point is that there are many strange beliefs in universities, churches, political parties and so on and no doubt many of them lead to action I don’t like. But the consequences of banning them or putting some other sanction on them are so serious

that I prefer to use reason and ridiculue.

In a similar discussion a while back I got into trouble for saying such behavior is not a hanging offence. Of course, no one is saying that but I draw a clear line between condemnation (OK) and demands that it be stopped (rarely OK).

For me, that line is drawn between things that cause serious harm (and I still say most of these things do not) and minor harm.

In particular, I would hate to encourage governments or anyone else to interfer with university teaching, no matter how nutty it is.

Now that you mention it, of course the “hanging offence” thread comes back. One can think something is dangerous and harmful without automatically wishing to ban it. You say you would draw the line between things that cause serious harm and minor harm. While this position is easy to understand, I still see things a little differently. By that I mean, for example, that while I consider all manifestations of religion harmful and think no religion should enjoy any official status, I would still stop short (this is if I had unlimited dictatorial powers – something else that should be banned) of trying to interfere with people’s private beliefs, no matter how stupid or harmful I thought them to be.

So, too, with Baudrillardian nonsense. What it needs is exposure and ridicule. The sad thing is that there are departments in universities where this mindset has enjoyed a reign of terror for several decades. I presume there were some critical moments in the history of the development of this monster in which those who could have stopped it were either off their guard or lacked the courage to say “the emperor is naked” in the face of a popular rising star. I don’t have to go back to check what Dutton said about Judith Butler; I know it almost off by heart: to ask what her Bad Writing Award sentence means is to miss the point; the big words are there to intimidate and club one into submission before her superior intellect.

Of course, Baudrillard wasn’t even using much fancy jargon; he was just talking through his rear end, as was pathetically obvious.